Revisiting Policy Preferences and Capacities in the EU: Multi‐level policy implementation in the subnational authorities

Research on multi‐level implementation of EU legislation has almost exclusively focused on the national level, while little is known about the role of subnational authorities. Nevertheless, it is a prerequisite for the functioning of the European Union that all member states and their subnational au...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of common market studies 2022-05, Vol.60 (3), p.783-800
Main Author: Paasch, Jana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
EU directives
European Union
implementation measures
Legislation
Policy implementation
subnational authorities
Timing
Transposition
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research on multi‐level implementation of EU legislation has almost exclusively focused on the national level, while little is known about the role of subnational authorities. Nevertheless, it is a prerequisite for the functioning of the European Union that all member states and their subnational authorities apply and enforce EU legislation in due time. I address this research gap and take a closer look at the legal transposition process in the German regional states. Using a novel data set comprising detailed information on about 700 subnational measures, I show that state‐level variables, such as political preferences and ministerial resources, account for variation in the timing of legal transposition and repeatedly lead to subnational delay. To conclude, the paper addresses the role of subnational authorities in the EU multi‐level system and points to their interest in shaping legal transposition in order to counterbalance their loss of competences to the national level.
ISSN:0021-9886
1468-5965
DOI:10.1111/jcms.13286